Archive for December 1st, 2017

The holiday season arrives at Newtown Creek in a manner alien to the neighborhoods surrounding it.

Hereabouts it’s truck tires roasting on a open fire, and that ain’t Jack Frost nipping at your nose kiddo, it’s benzene. Reviewing my year end list of; all the mistakes I’ve newly made, people I’ve offended, stupid things I’ve said in public, or generally humiliated myself somehow – it occurred that I hadn’t checked in on things in DUKBO (Down Under the Kosciuszcko Bridge Onramp) in about a month.

That’s the scene, above, at the spot where Review Avenue transmogrifies into Laurel Hill Blvd. at Penny Bridge, in the Blissville section of Long Island City, in the Borough of Queens.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Long time readers of this – your Newtown Pentacle – will tell you that this bridge replacement project has been explored before.

They’re still hard at work demolishing the rubble left behind by the “energetic felling” of the 1939 model Kosciuszcko Bridge at the start of October. These shots were captured from the hills of Calvary Cemetery, if you haven’t already figured that one out yet.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The reinforced concrete piers that carried the roadway are being demolished using traditional means. That involves the yellow thingamabob being equipped with a chisel hammer, and the guy on the orange lift is spraying water on the concrete to mitigate dust.

The shots of the Queens side of DUKBO in today’s post were shot on November 17th, a Friday.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

On the following Sunday the 19th, a humble narrator scuttled over to the Poison Cauldron in Greenpoint.

That’s my pet name for the section of DUKBO that begins at Kingsland Avenue and heads east past Meeker Avenue to the National Grid fencelines at Lombardy Street. It’s ugly in the Poison Cauldron, I tell you, ugly. Things can’t “get from bad to worse” because they’re already there.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Similar industrial demolition and scrap removal practices to those in Queens are also occurring on the Brooklyn side. Unlike the Queens side, however, I was able to walk right up to and on the job site. I even used one of the Porta Potties they had stationed to blow some internal ballast (hey, it’s a fairly long walk from Astoria).

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It is odd for me to see light in this spot… this was always an area permeated by shadows, which I now long for.

Additionally, not being chased, threatened, or harassed by the questionable managers of a local waste transfer station as to “whatchu takin pictchas of asshole, getdafukouttaherre” – said operation having been displaced by the construction activity – was not missed at all.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The only thing going through my mind was that this scene looked like a battle had been fought here.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I’m sure I’ll have a bit more to tell you about the Kosciuszcko Bridge shortly, as there’s supposed to be a meeting of the Stakeholders Committee coming up in early December.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There was only so far I wanted to go, as this was and is an active demolition site.

Luckily, that’s what zoom lenses are for.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The things you see along the Newtown Creek…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

… if you don’t take pictures of them, nobody would believe you.

How can such a place be real, and that so few people even know it exists, this omphalos of New York City?